Most
The first piece, in his words
The account fits in one sentence, and it is precise:
« A fine sliver of oak caught my sensibility, I managed to keep it upright and swaying thanks to two old and magnificent nails. »
Three things in that sentence are worth noting. The wood is not chosen, it is the wood that catches. The result is not still but swaying, which will become a constant. And the nails are called magnificent, which is not incidental: from the very first piece, salvage is not a fallback but a desirable material.
What forty eight changes
Starting late changes everything, and not only the number of years left.
There is no academic training to unlearn. No teacher explained to him what one does not do. The result is work without quotations, in dialogue with no school, which is also why it is hard to place.
There are, on the other hand, thirty years of something else. A bodily practice at a high level, the habit of teaching, a business to run. These are skills nobody calls artistic, and they decide whether you can produce every day for thirty years.
And there is time. He makes it the first condition himself: « above all I have a great deal of time to myself, an indispensable element, because time alone reveals the work, or does not. »
Six hundred pieces in six years
The figure is in his 2001 biography, six years after the sliver of oak: more than six hundred pieces made. That is about a hundred a year, two a week, without interruption.
This productivity is not a feat. It follows from his method: there is no sketch, no project, no commission. There is a stock of found material, and encounters between two elements. When the encounter happens, the piece exists within hours. When it does not, nothing happens, and he accepts that: « I can go without making anything for fairly long periods, as long as the material does not call to me I stay there empty, dead to all creation. »
The first five years
1995, the first piece. 1996, a work dated December is titled Orgasme and measures one hundred and twenty centimetres across: large formats arrive straight away. 1997, Serenity. 1998, Kendo. 1999, Cathédrale. In October 2001, Goutte d’or reaches two metres seventy two, which remains, among the pieces recovered, the most monumental.
In six years he therefore went from a sliver held by two nails to pieces close to three metres, with no training and no studio to begin with.
The Brussels accident
Outside recognition arrives like the rest, without strategy. « By the greatest of chances, a friend introduced me to the gallery of Madame Jane Bastien in Brussels. » Four works were shown, three sold quickly. In October of that same year, 2000, he showed at the Thuillier gallery, rue de Thorigny in Paris.
He adds, with the same frankness as for the club bar: « Although I never made much effort to exhibit or to make myself known, a friend finally convinced me to show my work. »
What this story is worth to somebody else
It does not say that all you need is to get started. It says three more useful things.
That
Seeing the works
The 137 pieces in the catalogue span thirty years, from the early works of the 1990s to the recent series. The word he uses to name them is explained in another article, and his relationship with judo throws light on how he makes things hold.